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Modeling social media

Marti Hearst gave an interesting talk at JHU on Social Media in which she described some important dimensions of through which we can understand the variety of phenomena that are tagged with that label. She examined expertise, the degree to which data are shared (synchronized!) among the people engaged in some activity, and the degree to which participants are working toward an explicitly-shared goal (even if they approach it different personal motivation).

The similarities are not surprising in some sense, because both reflect group behavior. But it is good to see the convergence of ideas: having a common language with which to discuss phenomena is an important step toward achieving a more detailed shared understanding.